


Fighting Chances

by GirlWhoWrites



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Ambiguous Universe, Angst, Drama, F/M, Sifki Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-07 02:15:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3157361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GirlWhoWrites/pseuds/GirlWhoWrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He pities the boy accompanying her, because Sif will fight and she will kill and she will win. A fitting tribute for his brother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fighting Chances

**Author's Note:**

> Originally started for metalshell's Sifki Week in March 2014, but I only just finished it. It's not really what I expected myself to write, but I'm really pleased I finally finished it. Hopefully, January is the month of me picking my writing pace back up. We shall see. Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy it!

**One.**

Her name is drawn first, and she does not even flinch, but walks steadily up to the stage. Her face is a blank.

She stands stiffly on the stage and stares flatly at the crowd as their escort simpers at her, before drawing the boys’ name. 

Two years ago, he stood in this crowd and watched his brother be reaped. Thor. Thor, who was the best tribute their district had had in years.

Who was paired with the Foster girl,  _Jane_. Jane who was so delicate and terrified, she had to be half-carried to the stage. Jane who had no idea how to start a fire, how to hunt… she wasn’t even good at socialising. Jane, whose family was one of the few in the district that managed to escape decades upon decades of reapings.

And in the end, Jane had come home, shell-shocked and silent.

Thor had not. 

Now his best and oldest friend stands where he did, and he pities the boy accompanying her, because Sif will fight and she will kill and she will win. A fitting tribute for his brother.

“Loki Odinsson.”

The House of Odin has fallen and nothing will rise from the ashes.

**Two.**

His mother’s hands are shaking when they come to say good-bye.

She has been so sad since Thor, and he can see the cracks in her façade fracturing as she drags him into a hug.

“Loki, Loki,” is all she murmurs, and he can hear her grief.

“It’s okay, Mother,” he kisses her cheek. “It’s okay.” 

“My boys,” Frigga murmurs as Odin pulls her back gently. 

“Good luck,” Odin offers grimly. He expected no more. Since Thor, they have been distant at best.

As if Thor’s death was his fault.

As if he should have volunteered. 

Died for Thor.

It was always Loki’s fault for some invisible reason that was never said.

As if Thor would have done anything but laughed if volunteered for him. 

As if Loki would last a day.

“I love you, Loki,” Frigga manages as the guards return. “Don’t forget that.” 

“I love you too, Mother,” he calls, but he isn’t certain that she hears it as the door latches closed.

He hopes she doesn’t watch, when it happens. He hopes Odin spares her of that, for her sake. 

There is something terrible and lonely about dying like that.

He doesn’t want to be alone. 

**Three.**

They travel in finery that is wasted on them. 

Their mentor is another of Thor and Sif’s friends, Volstagg. He won when they were fourteen, but came out of it with a bad leg and a permanently haunted look.

They all remember what he managed with a single axe.

He was there when Thor died. They all remember that too.

He finds Sif after dark, when everybody else is sleeping, and she is in the lounge with the recordings of past games.

He watches her fast-forward through the footage to specific scenes.

Volstagg burying an axe in a girl’s back.

Volstagg decapitating a boy clutching a crossbow.

Volstagg allowing a knife to bury in his thigh and rip through the muscle to finally take out the final tribute.

And then she swaps tapes.

He knows what is coming before she even reaches the remote.

His brother.

Alive and laughing as he walks through the mountain arena with Jane at his side.

Alive.

It still seems utterly impossible that the boy on the screen is dead.

It seems utterly possible he will be dead in a week.

He wants to say something to Sif, but he doesn’t know the words.

**Four.**

Volstagg warns them, meeting the other tributes is always the worst. They are people, too, with mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and friends back home, praying for their safe return.

It isn’t that bad, not for Loki. But he doesn’t like people, generally.

But he sees how awful it is written on Sif’s face.

The boy with the bad heart who hovers protectively and nervously around the tall, graceful girl.

The sad, hulking boy who doesn’t let the brunette with the glasses out of his sight.

The redhead and the blonde who are so perfectly and uncannily still.

And four faces that are dreadfully familiar, enough that even Loki shudders.

Fandral and Hogun, who left their district after Volstagg but before Thor. Fandral, with his quick grin and honeyed words. Hogun with his stoic, silent support.

Fandral pulls Sif into a bone-crushing hug that she returns.

“The fates were not kind this year,” Hogun observes to Loki with a nod of greeting. “Us meeting again like this.”

“When has fate ever been kind?” is his sharp reply. The other tributes are watching them, he can feel their eyes.

Fate is not kind, and neither is Loki Odinsson.

**Five.**

The opening ceremonies are a blur of ridiculousness, of offensiveness and he wants to scream, howl obscenities at those who send them to their death for their amusement.

But he doesn’t. 

Sif watches him carefully, swathed in fabric of gold, her hair woven with it, and her eyes painted with it. She is glorious, incandescent and that image of her is burnt into his mind forever. Some kind of righteous goddess, deigning the common folk their amusements before she reaps her pound of flesh.

He is hopeless in so many ways.

She clasps his hand as they ride through the opening ceremony. Gold and silver, first and second. Winner and loser. 

Of course, this is the games, so it is truly survivor and corpse.

They cannot bring themselves to return to their lodgings after the ceremony, and instead ride the elevator up and down, still dressed in their finery. Sif rubs her eyes and smears the gold paint in a way that is even more enchanting, and they lie together on the floor of that glass elevator, watching the people below them. Watch the confused faces of those who see them. 

Later, he sees he is smudged with gold.

**Six.**

Training sessions are dreadful, and Volstagg is grim. Watch, but never forget the others are watching them for strengths. For weaknesses.

Always overestimate, prepare for the worst you can imagine.

He makes some dark joke about carrying a shovel with him, and Sif embeds her knife in the table in cold, blistering fury.

He does as he always has. He watches.

He watches Sif heft the bladed weapons with affection, watches her put the fear of god into the other tributes, burying a dagger hilt-deep in the target with one lazy throw.

He watches the boy with the bad heart tinkering at a table, making rough, ugly devices that crackle to life with more force than anyone expected.

He watches the blonde boy string a bow, and a bigger blonde boy test the weights of several objects. He watches the hulking, dark haired boy show a curly-haired girl how to build something on the electronics table.

The girls are less willing to demonstrate their abilities, especially after Sif.

He sees fear and resignation in their faces – all except the redhead. 

She looks resigned in a way Loki recognises intimately. 

They’re going down, but they’ll pave their way with blood.

**Seven.**

It comes upon them, looming impossibly.

The night before, he finds Sif, staring at the ceiling.

When the scores were released, they thought they knew what to expect. 

They knew Sif would score highly. They knew that would paint a target on her back.

But they didn’t remember to consider Thor.

That Loki’s legacy is a shadow wrought by his dead brother, a brother that took down anyone who stood before him, who threatened Jane. That the name Odinsson overshadowed the few paltry knife tricks he managed in his assessment. 

That the ten painted on his back is painted in Thor’s blood and the blood Thor spilt.

He joins her on the floor and she sighs.

“How do we do this, Loki?” she murmurs. “Tell me what to do.”

The words hurt, ache dully, because they are the ones she used as a child, when his games proved too complex, when she was bored and lonely.

This time, he has no rules or schemes.

“It will be an honour to be killed by you, Sif,” is all he manages. “But please, make it quick.”

He doesn’t expect the black eye.

He expects the tears and the hug even less. 

**Eight.**  

He is numb that entire morning, waiting to be taken to the arena. He eats and drinks almost mechanically, the tiny, practical voice in his head reminding him that this could be his last meal, and that he’s no good to anyone if he doesn’t eat.

He wonders why he bothers, truly. In two weeks, he’ll be in the ground next to his golden brother, forgotten. 

_Here lies Loki, a pound of flesh for someone else’s sins._

Everything is a washed out blur as he is marched through the halls and tunnels, towards the arena. He is aware of moving and of the slight rattle every time he breathes. But not much else.

_Here lies Loki, gutted for sport._

The pod that takes him into the arena reminds him of a coffin, of a test tube, of a bell jar and he wonders what would happen if he tried to break out of it. Would they kill him on sight, or would they forcibly shove him into the arena?

_Here, inevitably, lies Loki._

Snow. It was everywhere. His breath puffs out in front of him, as he blinks at the brightness of the arena. Frost mottled the side of the Cornucopia, dulling the golden sheen. 

_Ten. Nine. Eight._

He can hear the countdown dully, as he looks at the forest that surrounds them. Mountains, in the distance. Mountains mean caves, a place to run and hide. Warmth. 

Why should he bother?

_Seven. Six. Five._

His entire body is coiled to run.

_Four._

The number three is muffled as Freya steps off her pod and the world explodes.

Freya. He remembers her, too, from a childhood when the districts were easier to move between. She has caramel coloured hair, a laugh like bells. She had worn white to the interview, with flowers in her hair. 

Now he has her brains smeared across his face, and is staring, they all are, and the countdown has finished but no one has moved. They are staring at Freya’s pod, at the mangled, wet remains of the girl who just committed suicide rather than play to an audience.

He sees her out of the corner of his eye, looking up and seeing him and then she is moving like the damn wind. Sif was always a good runner, snow and ice slushing around her feet.

She is at the Cornucopia before anyone else has noticed, and then there is a fumbled scramble, but Sif is fast, efficient, deadly. She is strapped with things – blades and weapons, supplies – as some of the others approach her.

Hogun, Fandral and a few others are clustered around Freya’s remains. The girl with the glasses is vomiting.

He hasn’t moved an inch, and Freya’s blood is dripping off his face.

“For the love of god, Loki,  _run_!” she bellows, and he does. 

**Nine.**

Sif finds him up a tree. She has an angry-looking cut on her cheek, and is a patchwork of bruises. Her lips are blue, and her hair is wet and she is dark and sinister amongst the innocent looking snow.

“Get down,” is all she says to him.

“Has the time come already, merciful Sif?” he sings out, and they are both being completely stupid because someone will hear them, and if he has to die today, he would rather it at her hand.

She huffs and rolls her eyes.  He leaps from the tree to land at her feet.

“Have you eaten?” she asks, pulling the flimsy looking bag off her shoulders. Knives are strapped too it, and he could see blood staining the blades.

“With the bountiful meal options? Of course.” His sarcasm earns him a glare, and then she stuffs a bundle into his hand – dried meat and strange, crisp bread-like substance. Food.

“Fattening me up for the slaughter?” he asks.

“I  _will_  kill you if you don’t shut up and eat,” she snaps, and offers a water bottle.

He doesn’t know why she’s wasting her food and water by feeding him, but he eats and drinks, and ignores the fact that she is clearly limping.

When they get up to leave, she hands him things. Another tiny package of dried food. Some water purification tablets. And a bundle of shiny, sharp throwing knives, smeared with someone else’s blood.

At least she’s giving him a fighting chance.

**Ten.**

The knife juts out obscenely, buried right to the hilt, and he chokes.

This is a mess, a terrible mess, and Sif grins at him, and he can see the blood at the corners of her mouth, gathering, beading and spilling.

The boy who threw is looking sick and stammering, his voice catching, his eyes impossibly wide and is he trying to  _apologise?_

It was supposed to hit  _him_. He was the one who slit the boy’s partner’s throat in a moment of desperation and wildness that is long gone in the face of Sif with a blade buried unforgivably in her chest.

He is desperate as he begins peeling away the layers, the weapons. He screams obscenities at the lingering boy, until he turns and runs. There is hot blood, the warmest thing he has felt in days, spilling down her skin and in no way can he fix this. The serrated blade has torn, ripped, punctured and destroyed.

He is clutching at her and rocking her and demanding to know why, why she stepped in front of the damn knife, she was supposed to win and go home and be stupidly brave and smart. She has her head against his shoulder, and clutches at him feebly.

“You can be okay, Loki,” she manages, but there is something lacking in her voice that makes him clutch her tightly. “You’re better than this.”

There is hysteria in his voice and he knows he is crying, and that everyone is watching this moment and seeing Thor’s brother weep over a  _girl_.

_Thor_  would have protected her, would have saved her and sent her home.

Her hand is on his cheek, sticky with her own blood, and she guides his face to hers, and kisses him. He now knows how her blood tastes, and is all wrong – soft and final, and nothing like he imagined kissing her would be like. But she’s half-dead in his arms in the middle of a winter battlefield, so this is all they will have. He strokes her cheek, and he sees the terror in her eyes, so he kisses her softly again. 

“Make sure you fight.”

Those are her last words.

Not to win, but to  _fight_.

**Eleven**.

He dies anyway, looking at the sky.

He dies, understanding his brother, Sif, and Jane Foster better than anyone else.

He dies with relief that he doesn’t have to go home again and pretend that surviving feels remotely like winning. 

He dies, spared a lifetime of remembering Freya’s blood on his face, Sif’s blood on his tongue; of understanding that hollow look in Jane’s eyes to the bone. Of being considered better than his brother, because he walked off a field of death with his heart still pounding.

He dies a better man than the boy who walked onto the field, bitterly composing his own epitaph.

He dies alone, with a thousand epiphanies on his tongue and an arrow in his chest. 


End file.
